In the last weekend of 2000, millions of Canadians read the Canadian Firearms Centre’s "Important Information for all Canadians about responsible firearm ownership" notice when they opened their daily newspapers. Despite the considerable financial resources that the Dominion government has poured into Bill C-68 (The Firearms Act), the CFC’s notice advised the approximately 1.5 million license applicants that it cannot issue their firearm licenses by the 1 January 2001 deadline specified by the Act. Instead, it will provide them with "temporary" licenses valid until 30 June 2001.

The temporary licenses will be valid just long enough for the CFC to process their applications and, more importantly, avoid embarrassing inquiries as to why a program that has cost taxpayers at least $400 million still cannot deliver licenses on schedule, or within the $85 million budget originally promised by the Department of Justice when the legislation was passed in 1995.

The CFC’s largesse applies only to gun owners who applied for a license before 1 January 2001. While most intelligent people recognise that simply issuing someone a license on a plastic card does not make them "responsible," the juxtaposition of the words "license" and "responsible" are a cornerstone of the CFC’s public ad campaigns. Readers were advised that any gun owner who did not apply for a license or have a valid Firearms Acquisition Certificate (FAC) ". . . may be subject to penalties under the Criminal Code." In other words, the CFC advised the Canadian public that if a gun owner, even a family member or a neighbour, does not have an FAC or applied for a license by 1 January 2001, then they are criminals and not "responsible" gun owners.

According to the CFC’s website, there were 3.3 million gun owners and 7.4 million firearms in Canada in 1998. But the CFC’s notice did not tell the public that based on the number of existing FAC’s and license applications received by 30 December 2000, there will be just 2 million "legal" gun owners in Canada by 30 June 2001. This figure assumes that every application is accepted, and that every applicant is actually a gun owner and not someone who resides in a home where firearms are present.

Based on the CFC’s figures, forty per cent of Canadian gun owners, over one million people, became criminals on 1 January 2001. Even this estimate is probably too low.

Telephone surveys conducted by polling firms are the most common method of estimating the number of firearms and civilian gun owners in Canada. The fact that telephone surveys underestimate civilian gun ownership (by at least 5 per cent to 10 per cent) is well known, and is one of the most serious problems with this type of study.

But low estimates mean that more restrictive firearm laws appear to affect a relatively small number of people. This makes it much easier for pro-control advocates to dismiss the issue of non-compliance and promote increasingly restrictive gun laws; consequently, most researchers, especially those employed by the Dominion government, simply ignore the issue of underreporting.

In general, some of the flaws with telephone survey research on gun ownership are:

1. Respondents have good reasons to deny gun ownership if they are unsure of the legal status of either themselves or their guns vis-à-vis existing or proposed legislation. This is certainly the case in Canada, where the overwhelming majority of Canadians have no significant knowledge of Canada’s firearm laws.
2. Survey respondents may be suspicious of strangers who telephone asking for information on how many firearms they own. They may feel that responding affirmatively is an invitation to burglary, or that it is simply none of the interviewer’s business.
3. Households may have more than one gun owner. The survey respondent may not be a gun owner, may be unaware that there are actually firearms in the home, or hesitant to admit household gun ownership to strangers. This appears common among married women, who should report household gun ownership at the same percentage as married men; however, surveys consistently show that married women underreport household gun ownership. In Canada, underreporting by married women is especially prevalent in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec. This bias alone results in household gun ownership levels that are at least four percentage points too low.
4. Respondents may not include firearms that they keep in the garage, at the cottage or place of business.
5. Neither the survey interviewer nor the respondent may be clear as to what actually constitutes the legal definition of a "firearm."

Most surveys on civilian gun ownership in Canada were done between 1991 and 1998. These surveys suggest that between 17 per cent and 29 per cent of all Canadian households own one or more firearms. Each gun owning household in Canada owns an average of 2.67 firearms, primarily rifles and shotguns.

While the surveys usually focused on household ownership, several of them asked if respondents personally owned firearms. Typically, between 13 per cent and 16 per cent of respondents replied affirmatively. Approximately 10 per cent of gun owning households report multiple gun owners, providing additional evidence that the estimate of the number of gun owners in Canada is considerably larger than most of these surveys indicate.

According to the information posted on the CFC’s website, there were 1.22 gun owners per gun owning household in 1998, and twenty-four per cent of Canadian households (2.7 million households) owned guns.

These surveys were done coincident with Bills C-17 (1991) and C-68 (1994). This legislation substantially increased restrictions on civilian gun ownership, prohibiting many types of firearms. Respondents would have had a valid excuse for concealing gun ownership; significantly underestimating the level of civilian gun ownership. Gary Kleck, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University, observed a similar trend in the United States. According to Professor Kleck, underreporting of household gun ownership in the US increased as more restrictive gun laws were introduced after 1987 (particularly the Brady Act and "assault weapon" bans).

An interesting comparison involves reviewing the estimates of civilian gun ownership made in the 1990s with surveys done before restrictive Canadian ‘gun controls’ were passed. It is important to remember that before the Dominion government passed Bill C-51 in 1977, anyone except certified lunatics could buy as many rifles or shotguns as they desired. There was no requirement for gun licenses, no registration of "legal length" rifles or shotguns, and no restrictions on "military style" semiautomatic rifles or "high capacity" magazines. More importantly, the government had not embarked on its policy of prohibiting firearms either by outright confiscation or through "grandfathering," otherwise known as delayed confiscation without compensation. The stigma currently associated with civilian gun ownership, especially noticeable in the media-generated antigun hysteria that followed the 1989 mass shootings at the University of Montreal, was certainly not as prevalent. In 1976, survey respondents would have had less reason to deny owning firearms.

In 1977, the Dominion government released the results of a national poll on Canadian attitudes towards crime and ‘gun control’ done by Goldfarb Consulting Limited. Goldfarb conducted the survey in September of 1976. They asked 1,586 Canadians over 18 years of age:

1. Do you personally own a gun?
2. Does anyone in your house own a gun?

Twenty-one per cent of respondents indicated that they personally owned a gun. Twenty-eight per cent indicated that someone in their home owned a gun. Given the wording of the question, it is possible that respondents who owned a gun also included themselves when answering affirmatively to the second question.

Applying these percentages, respectively, to the Canadian population over 18 years old (16.3 million) indicates that in 1976, there were between 3.43 million and 4.57 million gun owning Canadians. Overall, Goldfarb reported that 35 per cent of Canadian households, some 2.5 million homes, possessed firearms.

To accept the CFC’s 1998 estimate of gun ownership; i.e., twenty-four per cent of all households and 3.3 million owners, one has to accept that the number of gun owning households in Canada increased by just 8 per cent between 1976 and 1998, while the number of gun owners actually declined. There appears little evidence that can support this view.

It is acknowledged that the best predictor of gun ownership is the presence of firearms in the home. American data shows that 80 per cent of gun owners report that their parents kept a firearm in the home, and that individuals whose parents own guns are three times more likely to own one themselves. It must also be emphasised that the FAC system and associated ‘gun controls’ introduced in 1977 were far less restrictive than the regime introduced by Bill C-68. Unlike The Firearms Act, the 1977 legislation did not prohibit firearm ownership, particularly of rifles and shotguns; consequently, there was little disincentive against persons owning guns, acquiring guns, or adopting the same gun owning heritage their parents enjoyed.

The Canadian population increased from 23 million to 27.4 million between 1976 and 1992, with the number of private households increasing by 40 per cent. Since it is not unreasonable to assume that the number of gun owning households increased proportionately as new generations of Canadian shooters began acquiring firearms (analyses of American gun ownership data reported a similar trend), then there would have been approximately 3.5 million gun owning households in Canada by 1992. If we multiply this figure by the 1.22 gun owners per gun owning household ratio calculated by the CFC, then by 1992 there were at least 4.3 million gun owners in Canada, and approximately 9.4 million firearms (based on 2.67 guns per 3.5 million gun owning households).

In contrast, if we apply the individual gun ownership figures reported by Goldfarb in 1976 to the 1992 population over nineteen years of age, between 4.1 million and 5.5 million Canadians owned guns by 1992.

There is also a substantial discrepancy between survey based estimates of the gun stock and production based estimates. The measured growth in the survey estimated gun stock is not nearly large enough to match additions to the gun stock described in import/export data (the retail trade in Canadian manufactured firearms for Canada’s civilian market is virtually non-existent). This in itself is evidence that survey respondents are concealing gun ownership.

In its 1991 survey on civilian gun ownership in Canada, Angus Reid Group Inc. suggested that the estimated civilian gun stock in Canada increased by just 758,000 firearms between 1976 and 1991(from 5.168 million to 5.926 million). This figure is completely contrary to earlier gun stock estimates and import/export data.

In 1976, the Department of Justice Canada stated that in 1974, there were between 10 million and 11.186 million firearms in Canada. According to the Department of Justice, rifles constituted 60 per cent of the estimated Canadian firearm stock, followed by shotguns (34 per cent) and handguns (6 per cent).

Statistics Canada data shows that between 1975 and 1998, a total of 3.975 million non-military firearms were legally imported into Canada, with 1.124 million exported. According to Statistics Canada data, the non-military gun stock in Canada increased by 2.85 million firearms during this twenty-three year period.

It is important to consider that between 1976 and 1992, Canada was a net importer of firearms; imports exceeded exports by five to one. It was not until Bill C-68, when the government did its level best to drive legal gun dealers out of business, that Canada became a net exporter of firearms. To accept a premise that civilian gun ownership declined between 1976 and 1992, one must believe that for nearly two decades, Canadian gun dealers were importing millions of guns, most of them rifles and shotguns, that they were not selling or exporting.

Combining the import data with the government’s 1974 minimum estimate of 10 million firearms suggests that by 1998, there were 12.9 million firearms in Canada.

This total must be adjusted to account for firearms removed from circulation. There are approximately 59,090 police officers and 69,780 security guards in Canada. If we assume that every police officer and security guard has a gun for employment purposes, then 128,870 firearms can be subtracted from this total. We can eliminate another 92,000 lost and stolen guns, and 15,737 firearms surrendered to police for destruction during the 1978/1992 national gun amnesties.

It is extremely difficult to estimate the number of guns recovered, and subsequently destroyed, by police investigating criminal incidents. A 1995 Justice Department report suggests that police in major Canadian metropolitan areas recover about 7,000 firearms annually; however, a significant portion of these guns are undoubtedly weapons smuggled from the United States. A substantial number were probably returned to the their rightful owners; regardless, to be conservative we estimate that the police recovered, and subsequently destroyed, about 170,000 firearms since 1974.

Based on these figures, approximately 350,000 firearms can be removed from this estimate, leaving 12.5 million guns in civilian hands at the end of 1998.

At 2.67 firearms per household, this means that in 1998, between 4 million and 4.7 million Canadian households owned guns; considerably higher than the estimate of 2.7 million gun owning households described in the CFC’s website. Applying the CFC’s 1.22 gun owners per gun owning household ratio provides an estimate of 5 million to 5.5 million gun owners in Canada at the end of 1998.

As we have attempted to illustrate, comparing the 1976 estimates with production and telephone survey data provides a more congruent estimate of the number of firearms and gun owners in Canada. Based on these figures, it appears reasonable to conclude that there are approximately:

• 4 million to 4.5 million gun owning households in Canada;
• 5 million to 5.5 million individual gun owners; and,
• 10 million to 12 million civilian-owned firearms.

While the CFC will not publicly admit to underestimating the number of guns and gun owners, their own internal documents estimate that there are 3.8 million gun owners and 11 million firearms in Canada, and that gun owner non-compliance with The Firearms Act could be as high as 70 per cent.

It must also be emphasised that at the same time that the number of guns and gun owners in Canada were increasing, there was no corresponding consistent increase in gun violence. In fact, gun-related injuries, fatalities (accidents, homicides and suicides) and gun-related violent crimes decreased significantly. A similar trend was reported in the United States. While the Dominion government and firearm prohibitionists suggest that this decline resulted from the 1977 and 1991 firearm laws, their supporting evidence is described as ". . . inadequate, methodologically questionable, inconclusive, and contradictory."

The argument will undoubtedly be made that the difference in the number of licensed owners and the CFC’s 1998 estimate of 3.3 million owners results from approximately one million gun owners having disposed of their firearms between 1998 and 30 December 2000. This argument is difficult to support.

There must be some firearm owners who decided to give up their guns, but claiming a radical decline of approximately 1.3 million gun owners requires that some 800,000 Canadian households sold, traded, or otherwise disposed of approximately 2.2 million guns. There is no published evidence suggesting that such an enormous reduction in civilian gun ownership actually took place.

This massive gun disposal would have to have occurred at a time when the number of licensed Canadian gun dealers, who would have been able to accept their guns for export or sell them to other authorised owners, declined by one-third between 1995 and 1998 alone. Canadian gun exports surpassed imports after 1995, as frustrated dealers liquidated their stock; however, this export figure amounted to only 95,544 total firearms in 1998.

While 400,000 Canadians possessed valid FAC’s at the end of 1998, retail imports dropped substantially after 1995, suggesting a significant drop in Canada’s retail gun trade. It is possible that owners who wished to give up their guns simply gave or sold their guns to other persons who did not have a license or FAC, resulting in no significant change in the number of firearms in civilian hands.

The implication of these data is that most Canadian gun owners, some 2.5 million to 3 million people, have "opted out" of The Firearms Act. Since they will not have licenses, they cannot register their guns.

Without high levels of compliance, police cannot use the CFC’s gun owner licensing and registration data with any certainty. They cannot inspect gun owners for compliance with storage regulations, or be notified of the theft of unregistered guns. Current levels of non-compliance mean that The Firearms Act is unlikely to have any significant positive effect on public health or safety. At least 5 million firearms will continue to be bought, sold and traded on black and grey markets that the government itself created by passing legislation that many gun owners disagree with so strongly to disobey it.

Although unlicensed owners are subject to serious criminal penalties, the overwhelming majority of Canadian gun owners are non-violent people without criminal records who do not live a ‘criminal’ lifestyle. It is well known that the demographics of a ‘typical’ gun owner and a ‘typical’ criminal are completely dissimilar. This simple reality means that the chance of an otherwise law-abiding gun owner getting caught for unlicensed gun possession, or with unregistered firearms, is relatively remote.

But the implications of non-compliance on licensed gun owners are equally as severe as the criminal penalties that can be applied against unlicensed owners. There will be increasing demands for the CFC to be financially self-sustaining, meaning that licensing and registration fees must increase substantially. Any costs associated with running the system must inevitably be passed on to licensed owners. The bureaucracy will promote new permits and a new range of fees in an effort to make the system break even.

Only the most hopelessly naïve gun owner can believe that they are not vulnerable to additional restrictions now that The Firearms Act gives the Dominion government an absolute right to prohibit any gun not considered "reasonable" for hunting or sporting purposes. The Act is not the end of "restrictive" Canadian gun laws. The international experience shows clearly that licensed Canadian gun owners should anticipate more onerous restrictions on gun ownership, including complete bans on handguns, semiautomatic and pump/slide action firearms.

While a number of gun owning Canadians seem prepared to trust the Dominion government and the CFC, it appears that for many, the cost of complying with The Firearms Act outweighs the benefits.

In 1780, British Parliamentarian Edmund Burke wrote that: "Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny." Current levels of non-compliance with The Firearms Act suggest that most Canadian gun owners agree with him.

January 8, 2001